


Promises

by Unchained_Daisychain



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Christmas Eve, December 1961, Fluff, John has a nasty habit of just popping in on major holidays, Light Angst, Like Lots, M/M, Mentions of Paris, Mistletoe, Paul really doesn't know how to handle it, Sorry Not Sorry, a little bit of yuletide smut, just not in the way you think, this turned into like half Christmas shit half smut without me knowing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 08:55:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17138789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unchained_Daisychain/pseuds/Unchained_Daisychain
Summary: John shows up on Christmas Eve, doing everything they promised they wouldn't.-Paul imagines himself having it. Having it all, but having it here and now, on Christmas Eve. This snowglobe fantasy where every Christmas is spent with John, talking across a festive dinner at the kitchen table and piling onto the couch afterwards for a sappy movie. Sometimes he can almost feel the dome sealed tightly around him, the still air trapped inside of it, the calm of it all. But then something shakes the globe, fast and angry, and everything topples back out of place again.





	Promises

**Author's Note:**

> idek what this is, but it kinda popped into my mind and gave me something to post for Christmas. I'll get back to my other stories and that smutty sequel soon. inspiration and motivation was a biatch until recently when I started on this. but I hope this is good enough for now, and I'll try to have more updates in 2019.
> 
> happy holidays and happy reading ❤︎

Paris doesn’t change them, because they promised they wouldn’t let it. So, when they returned to Liverpool, they melded back into the familiar molds of themselves they left behind and scraped away any excess that made the fit too tight. Now, furtive touches and stolen kisses only exist in shoddy Parisian inns and shadowy corners of minds.

 _It’s probably for the best, right?_ John asked him on the last day of their holiday, and Paul agreed, despite how tightly his aversion to that reality twisted in his gut.  

_We don’t let it change us._

So things found momentum again and picked back up as if they’d never been put down. The world turned, still relying on its axis, and Paul managed, relying stronger than ever on the band and their music. On a good night he can forget the way John moves against his body and whispers his name. On a bad night, it all comes washing over him like a wave until he’s gasping for air but somehow still alive—reliving and reliving.

But on Christmas Eve, two months after Paris and the passion, the earth shifts in a way that ends up with John standing at his front door and Paul remembering how awful he is at keeping promises.

He stops dead in his tracks and doesn’t know if it’s the wintry chill that steals his breath or the sight of John standing at the threshold of such an intimate family moment. The streetlights have long come to life and slant dimly along the sharp angles of John’s body. He can see his friend’s breath clouding between them. He smells the smoke clinging to his clothes, will probably find a half-smoked fag in the shrubs tomorrow morning. Will find it and think about John, topping a smart jumper with the worn leather of his Uncle George’s jacket as he stands on his front step far too casually, like Christmas is merely a day on the calendar.

It’s overwhelming.

“John?” Paul says, ending it there while their breaths meet in the middle.

“On a good day, yeah,” John jokes.

Stupidly, Paul informs him, “It’s…it’s Christmas Eve.”

“Is it?” He checks a watch that isn’t on his wrist. “Hm, I thought they cancelled that this year.”

Paul rolls his eyes. “Why’re you here?”

“I was just in the neighborhood. Thought I’d drop by, check in on me best mate.”

“You’ve never done that before.”

Sure, John has come around with a guitar slung across his back and a chip on his shoulder, ready to bowl over the neighbors with quick strumming and raunchy lyrics. Sometimes he would stagger up to the stoop looking to stay the night when he had more drink in him than he did patience for Mimi’s badgering. But arriving clean-cut and sober? Without his guitar or any other care in the world? This is a blue-moon occurrence.

John sighs and his shoulders slump with the weight of it. There’s an emotion written across his face—something filing in line next to nervousness—but before Paul can place it precisely, the page flips. Frustration spells out across a blank one.

“Christ, didn’t realize I’d happened upon the bloody Spanish Inquisition.” He looks away and pushes a hand through his hair. It flops and folds against his fingers—the same as it did in Paris, when they both retired their DAs for a fresh, mod cut. “Maybe I’m trying something new this yuletide season. Consider it a gift.”

“Erm…well.” Paul glances over his shoulder, hears his dad puttering around the kitchen and Michael setting the table. He turns back to John with one hand still braced against the door like he’ll shut him out any minute. But he knows that’ll never happen; so many doors he’s tried to close between them, but a pesky foot always gets wedged between the wood. “We’re about to have dinner, but you could stay if you’d like,” he offers, borrowing John’s air of nonchalance.

As soon as the invitation is out, Paul wishes he could snatch it back up. Any other day of the year he could open up his home to John and assume they would conduct themselves as friends and nothing but. Today, however, is tender, too intimate. Today he can’t help but be wary of John, standing coolly on his step like he wants to whisk him away to Paris all over again.

“Are you sure?” John asks, because he thinks he has to. “Wouldn’t wanna impose on yer cushy little Christmas.”

Paul swallows his anxiety and jokes, “Since when have you ever cared about imposing?”

“Good point, where’s the food?”

He steps forward and presses the back of his hand to Paul’s chest, ushering him out of the way as he enters. When Paul shuts the door, the space between them is no longer choked and gelid from the air outside, but warm and all too tempting to close. Batting away that urge, Paul shouts to ask his dad if John can stay for dinner.

“He can join us,” comes his answer, “but tell him to leave his shoes and attitude by the door.”

John scoffs, unwinds his scarf from around his neck. Paul takes both the scarf and his coat, hanging them over a vacant hook on the rack. “He’s in a festive mood, huh?” John asks.

“Try not to antagonize him tonight, yeah?”

As he toes off his boots, John curls a hand around his shoulder for stability, then slides it along the nape of his neck once he straightens. Paul hates the quickening of his heart, the way it aches to lunge after John’s fingers, John’s touch.

The edge of John’s lips curl, and he murmurs, “No promises,” before leaving Paul alone in the front hall.

And there’s that word again. Promises: constantly made but scarcely kept.

At least this time John has the decency to warn Paul of his potential to renege. This time Paul doesn’t have to waste every breath as a prayer for John to change his mind. Because, unlike the past two months, John is promising him nothing at all.

 _What are you doing?_ Paul wants to scream. _You show up on Christmas like a gift I can’t open, and I’m just supposed to swallow the disappointment like it doesn’t hurt?_

Instead of bleeding out onto the vinyl flooring, Paul stitches up the wounds left by the memories and goes to dinner.

* * *

Dinner is pleasant, so, naturally, Paul is suspicious. 

Topics of conversation come and go like the stops on a greyhound; Paul jumps on and off of them just the same. He and John tagteam questions about their music and the direction it’s heading—a greyhound all of its own. But when discussions delve into unfamiliar territory—literature he hasn’t read, movies he hasn’t seen—Paul opts out in favor of soaking it all in.

For the most part he is enjoying himself, relieved to see his father and best friend exchanging words without a simmering animosity wedged between them. Occasionally, they even smile at one another. Mentally, Paul takes a step back, and, like waves to stones, the scene washes over him.

He notes, firstly, that everything is a touch too domestic. The roast tastes more tender than years’ past, smiles pass around the table as often as the food, and John slips right into the middle of it all like he’s been there for years. Paul waits to open his eyes, to wake up in his bed on Christmas morning with John miles and memories away from him. Beneath the table, he even steps on his foot to expedite the process, but the moments where John’s eyes lock with his still prove tangible as ever.

Maybe it’s the change of season or the low lighting, but John looks impossibly soft, his edges blurred like a bleeding watercolor. Paul wants to catch every drop of him in a jar, seal it and save it for a lonely, rainy day.

He thinks, _What did I do to deserve this?_

“With the way Stu’s acting all love-struck, we might be puttin’ Paul on bass soon.” The sound of his own name draws Paul back into the moment. For some reason John is discussing band drama with his Dad, who, to Paul’s surprise, offers his full attention.

“Paul on bass?” Michael crows. “You’d be better off asking a fish to climb a tree.”

Paul cuffs him over the head.

“Ah, c’mon,” John defends, “Macca could pull a note from a monk. He’ll charm anything you put in his hands.” Under the table, a foot nudges up against Paul’s, decidedly John’s by the way it traces the knot of his ankle bone. But if that wasn’t obvious enough, John then turns to him, small smile in tow.

The innuendo hidden in his words is ill-timed and not lost on Paul at all; rather than sticking around to unpack it, he clears his throat and stands from the table. He begins collecting empty plates, ignores the eyes staring holes into him.

“Done with this?” he asks John succinctly, pointing to a mostly empty plate.

“Yeah, but I’ll—”

“No, no, I’ve got it.” He waves John away when he stands to gather his own dishes. Pretends he doesn’t see the regret dimming the brightness of his friend’s eyes.

Once Paul mans the sink, everyone else disbands in favor of the next thing to do. He hears Mike scuttle off and minutes later the telly comes to life in the sitting room. Clinging to tradition, his father leaves to retrieve his pipe, ready for a post-dinner smoke.

At large, John looks utterly lost.

“Gonna come watch whatever shitty Crimbo show Mike has playin’ on the telly?” he asks Paul from the table.

A chaste puff of air leaves Paul’s nose. The smallest laugh, born from the fact John plans to kill his time with a holiday movie rather than heading upstairs to mess around on the guitar or something. “Yeah, be there in a mo’,” Paul answers, purposefully withholding his more sensible suggestions.

“Sure you don’t need any help?” John tries again, now invading the haven Paul has made for himself at the sink. He ducks his head in search of Paul’s eyes; against his better judgement, Paul lets him find them.

“You’re a guest, mate,” he says, but knows that’s not the only version of John who showed up at his house tonight.

A tight-lipped smile and a single tap against the porcelain rim of the sink, then John heads for the sitting room. Paul sighs and watches the warm water run over his hands.

* * *

“So what has John popping in for a visit, then?” Jim asks when he returns with a pipe tucked between his lips and the smoke already coughing out of the stuffed bowl.

“I dunno, really. Weird, though, innit?”

“For John? No,” he says, quick as a whip, and Paul nearly laughs. He quickly sobers when he hears, “Seems like that lad shows up wherever you go.”

His father’s words don’t sound accusatory. Not in the slightest. But Paul feels the need to defend himself regardless. “I…I didn’t invite him this time.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with it, of course. Maybe it’ll keep him out of trouble.” Smoke clouds around his eyes and he squints through it, thoughtful. “I was very doubtful of John in the beginning—”

“No, really?” Paul smiles at him, back pressed against the sink as he towels off the dishes. For his sarcasm, Jim shoots him a fond look, smile threading across his mouth thin as the smoke.

“—but he’s come to prove himself lately. Loyalty is admirable, and John has a lot of it. To his band…to you.”

Paul swallows thickly, tightens his grip on the plate in his hand, lest it slip and shatter. He hates getting lost inside his own head, especially lately. He can’t help but wonder, though, if he’s lost his footing along the way of this conversation. All of his father’s words are a bit too insightful, and Paul’s blood runs cold to think he’s privy to what he and John had.

Jim speaks again: “John could have chosen anywhere to be on Christmas, and he chose to be here.”

 _That’s what I don’t understand,_ Paul wants to say. _So_ many things he wants to say, secrets he wants to spill, that the urge of loosening his grip and letting himself shatter is all too inviting. But he knows the risks; his lips signed off on them with that very first kiss.

If only he could have the ear to listen without the mouth to judge. Maybe then his lungs would remember what it felt like to breathe again. Filling them one more time, he answers instead, “He’s a—a good friend,” and his voice teeters on the edge of a confession.

Jim nods and watches Paul store away the last of the dishes. “A good friend is hard to come by, son, so you gotta grab on tight, you know. Grab tight and hope the hold is strong enough to last you for a few years. Still don’t care for his bloody insolence,” he adds with a snort, “but he’ll change. They always change.”

Paul doesn’t want John to change too much, though—only in all the right ways. And he doesn’t want John to do it alone, either; Paul should meet him halfway, like a handshake that ends with a steadfast grip.

Paul sighs, cards a hand through his hair, both falling softly. “Well, I think I’ll go see what they’ve gotten up to in there. But, um, thanks for the chat, Da’.”

The smoke disperses around him when he moves in to give his father a hug.

Jim makes a surprised laugh but firmly pats him on the back, twice. Two words it says: _It’s okay._

On his way into the sitting room, the sight of John stops Paul dead at the doorway. All of John takes up the settee, long legs stretched across it and hooked over one arm while his head tilts sideways on the other. His specs sit high on his nose and a smile sweeps widely across his lips as he watches what Paul recognizes to be _Miracle on 34th Street._ There’s a glow about him, and it’s not just the Christmas tree in the corner, dousing him with reds and greens, that does it.

He looks to be enjoying the movie more than Michael, who lounges on the floor and as closely as he can get to the screen. It’s beyond adorable that John could be so enthralled, so unguarded with such a juvenile Christmas movie playing; Paul finds himself biting his lip on a smile that creeped up on him. He stands there watching for as long as he can get away with—burning the image and that smile into memory—until John finally meets his eye, head turned upside down but quickly jerking upright at the realization of being caught.

Smiling wider now, Paul finally steps into the room. “Ye don’t have to pretend you weren’t enjoying it just ‘cos I walked in the room.”

John clears his throat and shuffles up to allow room for Paul on the settee. “I wasn’t,” he argues plainly, not fooling Paul for a second. “Just…remembering something that happened earlier today.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah. Mimi tripped over the cat.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Was just—replaying it in me head.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bloody hilarious.”

“Uh-huh.”

Finally, John kicks his legs back out and prods them against Paul’s thighs in quick succession, laughing. “Fuckin’ piss off with your _uh-huh’s!”_

Paul throws his head back, joining in on the laughter until his cheeks hurt. When the feet keep kicking he grabs on, digging his thumbs into pressure points at the soles. It’s enough to make John stop. Head lolled against the back of the couch, Paul smiles at him and murmurs, “You’re too easy, Johnny, too easy.”

A pair of socked feet drop into his lap; an arm bends behind John’s head. His eyes are big, magnified behind the lenses of his glasses, so Paul doesn’t miss how they narrow ever so slightly. “You’d know firsthand, wouldn’t ye?”

Fucking hell.

Paul shoots him a glare under which John, thankfully, quells. He readjusts his feet against Paul’s thighs and glues his eyes back to the telly with twofold the attention. Resisting an aggrieved sigh, Paul pats John’s shin, and silence blankets over them for a few moments.

Every so often John will smile at the screen, and, by the third one, Paul notices how his fingers have curled around John’s ankle, thumb idly stroking back and forth where the cuff of his trousers have ridden up. He knows he should stop, but it’s just one of those things easier said than done—and the warmth of his skin sings a siren’s call. Thank Christ it isn’t John’s head against his thighs, because God knows he misses that familiar weight like mad.

Paul imagines himself having it. Having it all, but having it here and now, on Christmas Eve. This snowglobe fantasy where every Christmas is spent with John, talking across a festive dinner at the kitchen table and piling onto the couch afterwards for a sappy movie. Sometimes he can almost feel the dome sealed tightly around him, the still air trapped inside of it, the calm of it all. But then something shakes the globe, fast and angry, and everything topples back out of place again.

Not knowing if two minutes have passed or twenty, Paul glances over to John. His friend's eyes are growing heavy, each blink slower than the last. If Paul remembers correctly, the movie still has roughly thirty minutes left, which serves him plenty of time. He jostles John’s legs, watches his eyes flutter into full awareness.

John gives him a nod, questioning.

There’s one more thing he has to do, a final snowflake that needs to fall.

“Come upstairs for your prezzie.”

* * *

Understandably so, Paul’s chest always gets a fraction tighter when he’s left alone in a room with John. And this John, specifically, is a vice to his lungs and heart. Sleepy-eyed with a perfect circle of red staining his cheek from the rough fabric of the couch, yawning so wide his jaw pops and he laughs airily as he rubs it out.

Paul is fucked.

And kind of in love.

He rifles around under his bed for a brief second before his fingers bump against the silky wrapping paper. A sudden, fierce wave of self-consciousness sweeps over him, and he doesn’t entirely understand why. This present is already a step-up from John’s birthday present based on presentation alone, and if John can get excited over a cheap hamburger, surely he’ll love a gift Paul put more thought into.

He hands John the present and a nervous smile, then joins him on the edge of the bed. John gasps, shaking the present. “Is it a puppy?” he asks animatedly, despite the fact the gift is far too flat and square.

Paul humors his daft game with a shrug. “I dunno, shake it and see if it barks.”

John does just that, then follows it up with, “Is it a _dead_ puppy?”

Rolling his eyes, Paul pushes at his shoulder affectionately. “Just open yer fuckin’ gift, ye dolt,” he says through a laugh.

“Pushy, pushy,” John complains, but rips into the paper with childlike enthusiasm. It falls to the floor and leaves him holding a new album and a box of chocolates.

“Now, I know you think post-military Elvis is rubbish and shit,” Paul begins to explain, when John stares at the cover of _Blue Hawaii_ blankly, “but we both know this LP is pretty crackin’. And this’ll save you a trip to the record shop at the very least.” He rubs the side of his neck. “Far as the choccies, ‘m just, erm, indulging yer sweet tooth.”

It’s simple and thoughtful and the exact sort of gesture John would rib him about. He braces his ego, man enough to take a blow to it, but instead finds himself releasing an unwittingly held breath when John meets his eyes. The smile is slow to grow but well worth the wait once it does.

“I fucking love it, Macca,” he finally says, sounding amazed. “Thank you.”

Paul breaks into a smile of his own, his eyes shifting between John’s and clocking each emotion he catches. “Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome.”

The air in the room tightens again, a hand on the slow curl towards a fist. John’s gaze wanders to his lips, and Paul feels the faint throb of kisses once laid there. It’s dangerous territory. Looks like those break promises, and Paul has had enough broken already.

He clears his throat, prepared to address the elephant John brought to his doorstep. “Okay, I think we should talk about—”

“I got you something, too.” The words rush out like horses from a starting gate, and his eyes at last shoot up to meet Paul’s, his presents being set aside. “It’s—it’s a bit…. Well, just—here,” John stumbles out, butchering the delivery.

He roots around in his pocket, and, along with his hand, a torn leaf and two berries come falling out. John curses under his breath. What was left intact is placed on the bedspread between them, and the stray pieces haphazardly find a place amongst it.

Paul stares down at the broken mistletoe, speechless.

There’s a joke, somewhere in this situation, somewhere in the back of his mind. It’s buried under mounds of questions, though, and Paul doesn’t possess the mental faculties to find a shovel and dig. Softly, he says, “John…,” and nothing more.

John’s eyes are trained on his own fingers, fiddling with the jagged edge of a leaf. He reaches the pointy tip, then murmurs, “I was scared, Paul. Fucking terrified. And that’s no excuse, I know, but it’s all I know to say.”

He draws in a breath, wades over Paul’s silence smoothly.

“It’s just—y’know, it’s like I had all of these feelings in Paris, things I’d never felt before, and on that last day I knew we’d be going back home, but me stupid bloody brain didn’t know how to transfer new feelings to old places, so I. I just didn’t. I made us promise not to change, and I didn’t know I was already breaking that promise before I even made it.”

Paul’s eyes burn, a lump builds in his throat. He leans against the wall adjacent to his bed and digs the heels of his hands against his eyes until a kaleidoscope of colors blooms behind closed lids. Exhaling a shaky breath, he asks, “Why, John? Why Christmas? Why all of this now?” He moves his hands from his eyes, throws one out at the “present” still lying on the sheets like some festive potpourri. “I mean, shit, man, what even _is_ this?”

“Sometimes I don’t know how to tell you that I want to spend time with you. That’s when I do daft things like come ‘round on Christmas Eve and forcibly insert myself into your traditions.” Paul smiles at that and encouragement lights up behind John’s eyes. “But then I got here and I knew it wasn’t for nothing, ‘cos that part of me that was empty and aching all day went away when you opened the door, and honestly, I’m fucking—scared _shitless_ to lose that sense of relief you give me.”

With a reverence Paul has only ever seen him use on instruments, John places the shambles of a mistletoe in the palm of his hand. He pauses for a moment, during which Paul thinks he’s piecing together his words, plucking them down from where they dangle above. Paul’s heart beats in time with each second passing, but nothing prepares him for the way it stops altogether at John’s final confession:

“This is me telling you I don’t want to stop. I never wanted to stop.”

(The earth stuttered to a halt when John arrived at his door, but it suddenly kicks back into gear, spinning in reverse. The start-stop, jolting motion sickness of it all is almost unbearable.)

Paul feels like the air has just been knocked out of him. That bitter, vile air that has been bubbling and stewing ever since John told him the exact opposite of what he’s saying now.

Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop.

Why can’t they just grow a pair and pick one? Because this living between two extremes isn’t living at all.

“Me neither,” Paul at last responds, softly. Guilt creeps up behind his shoulders, an unwelcome shadow. _Guilt over what? Wanting John?_ Then he feels ashamed for feeling guilty, and it’s all a cocktail of emotions he’s having trouble swallowing. “I just thought maybe I was the only one, though. Who still wanted it.”

“You weren’t. _Aren’t.”_

“Yeah, but I don’t—if this is gonna be a one-off thing again, I don’t wanna do it. I can’t always be your warm body on lonely holidays, John.” The words cut like daggers leaving his own mouth, so he can’t imagine how they lacerate John. But Paul isn’t willing to sacrifice his self-preservation for his mate’s feelings at the moment. _“Please_ fucking spare me that heartache and tell me now if that’s what this is.”

“No! Christ, no,” John says desperately. “I wanna shag you _every_ day of the year, not just Christmas.”

Paul laughs, can’t resist. “Asshole,” he says, tacking on a shove for good measure. John captures his hand before he pulls it back again and holds it between them. Paul’s fingers curl around any inch of soft skin they can, starved for the contact. With his thumb, John strokes a slow back-and-forth against the back of his hand, riding it from knuckles to wrist, and Paul is hypnotized for a minute as he murmurs, “You say that, but…courage is a shifty little bugger, innit?”

“Maybe so. But my love isn’t.”

And that just throws Paul for loop after loop. His face is expertly still, but the whirring in his ears and the rabbiting of his blood nearly has him shaking to the bone. A life-changing word leaves John’s mouth so seamlessly, water that has spilled from a fountain for years. Paul learns abruptly and jarringly that it isn’t at all impossible to drown in a puddle.

In the interim of Paul’s silence, John sidles in closer—closer than he’s gotten all evening. He presses a kiss, gentle, to Paul’s cheek, then rests his forehead against his temple. Lips falling open, Paul releases a trapped breath. A nose edges along the soft curve of his cheekbone, and he leans into it, navigating on autopilot and switching off his thoughts. Those goddamn conflicting thoughts.

Breath tickling his ear, John whispers, “You know I’ll stay here all night, if I have to, ‘til you say yes, ‘til you give me another chance,” and Paul smiles at such staunch determination.

“I know,” he answers as he turns his head, John angling his own back until their eyes lock. Then Paul is leaning in and closing a mile-wide gap between Paris and now in a single kiss.

As soon as John’s lips mesh with his own, the memories thunder back into his mind: kisses stolen under the Eiffel Tower, because surely a structure so massive houses the world’s most deeply kept secrets; the chilled rush of banana milkshake slipping down his throat, being spoiled on a day that he can’t even call his own; John’s face, in innumerable shades of lighting, made of silk and glass and everything smooth and see-through as he spends two weeks of his life and money on Paul for God knows what reason.

Then Paul thinks about love and kisses John harder, because he knows exactly the reason why. And he wants to convey the same sentiment to John, too, leave behind not even a vestige of doubt.

The kiss grows dirty fast. John’s teeth catch on his lower lip, giving it a nibble that shoots a spike of heat straight into Paul’s groin. He moans, thrilling in the way it vibrates between their lips. As though picking up where they left off, his hands stake their claim on John’s skin—squeeze his shoulder and steady his jaw for those deeper strides of his tongue.

He can’t believe they thought they could tame this. Paul feels the recklessness all the way to his fingertips and knows a passion this strong is worth fighting for. John tastes even better than he did in Paris, and Paul could kick himself for thinking it was something he could live without.

The slick locking and unlocking of their lips is as rhythmic as a drumbeat, driving them towards a crescendo Paul is a bit desperate for. John does this devilish little trick he once tried in a shadow-infested alleyway, with his tongue flicking softly against the roof of Paul’s mouth, that has Paul cutting his nails across John’s nape, well beyond hard in his trousers.

“God, two months felt like two bleedin’ years,” Paul mumbles, hot and quick, against John’s lips. A hum of agreement is the closest he gets to a response. The kisses trail lower, down his cheek and beneath the shelf of his jaw. He sighs and tucks his fingers into John’s hair, gripping tight until a groan rattles against his pulse point.

“‘M sorry I hurt you, Paul,” John says into his skin, burying his apologies into Paul’s neck like it’s a confessional. “You don’t deserve it. Shit, you don’t even deserve _me,_ but I’d be fucking lost without you.”

Paul can’t bear to listen, positively _hates_ when John flays his own skin and self-esteem like this. In the middle of a heady snog, it’s difficult to take a step back, but he does it anyway. For John. “Shh, John, no—you didn’t know, okay?”

“Don’t leave me.” A few of the kisses regress to nuzzling, soft tip of his nose grazing along his neck. “Please, never leave me.”

Paul tilts back and takes gentle hold of John’s chin. “Look, don’t do this,” he says earnestly. “I’ve told you I’d never. I mean it. I always mean it.”

He doesn’t promise, for obvious reasons, but John doesn’t ask him to. Just nods with satisfaction at the conviction of Paul’s voice and presses a kiss so tender to his lips it hurts.

“Lay down for me, love,” John breathes, because they’re still half-leaned against the wall. Paul didn’t even notice the crick forming in his neck; everything is moving so fast.

Vibrating in his own skin, he shuffles to the top of the bed with as much grace as he can summon. John crawls up after him, chucking his stupidly adorable mistletoe to the floor and pulling his jumper up his chest before he does. Eyes heated, Paul curls a finger around one of John’s belt loops when he’s close enough, tugs him downward.

They fall into that familiar rhythm. He tosses a leg around John’s hip, grinding upward and sucking at John’s tongue when moans threaten to spill from his lips. He’s perfectly content getting off like this, with the weight of John pinning him to the mattress. So when John moves to pull away, Paul tightens the hold at his neck, earning a smile against his lips and a few more chaste pecks.

But against Paul’s wishes, John still breaks the kiss and sits astride his hips. For a moment, he observes. His hands slip beneath Paul’s shirt, rucking up the material and skating along the jumping muscles in his abdomen. When his fingers brush along a nipple, a gasp punches out into the air, so he does it again.

Paul feels inspected, laid bare—a butterfly in a glass case. Just when he’s starting to flirt with the edge of insecurity, John shakes his head lightly, shaken from his reverie. He dips his head and mouths wetly at warm skin, hardly stopping to speak clearly. “‘M so fuckin’ glad I came over.”

“You just wanted to get laid,” Paul teases, then wonders when his voice went all breathy and lost its heft. For his cheek, he gets a sharp nibble at the lip of his belly button.

Soothing over the bite with his tongue, John laughs, “Always, baby, always,” and Paul notes how he’s not disagreeing.

But rebuttals die in his throat when John’s hand fumbles at the button of his trousers, pops it open. He kisses up Paul’s chest until he meets the bunched boundary of shirt folded around his bottommost ribs, then just…keeps going. Clothing be damned. Paul is left with no choice but to remove it and gladly toss it aside.

The bare, chest-to-chest contact that follows is a lung-inflating breath after too much time spent underwater.

John puckers his lips around a nipple, teasing it with wet sweeps of his tongue.

“Johnny, fuck,” Paul whispers, hand twisted into thick auburn hair.

Humming, John kisses across his sternum until he reaches his other nipple, giving it the same attention. Eventually he makes his way back down, tongue sliding distressingly close to the waist of Paul’s trousers.

Mouth dry, Paul glides his hands along John’s upper back, mapping out muscles that have grown firmer since the first day they met. He’s caught between the canyon of wanting to kiss John until his lips are blue-black and wanting to wait him out, see what else he has in store. In the end, he tucks a hand into John’s hair and tests the extent of his own patience.

A hand slides into the open zip of his pants, palms over his erection, and Paul curses under his breath. Blindly he throws a forearm over his eyes as his trousers are guided down his long legs. On his way back up, John plants arbitrary kisses along the newly exposed skin like he’s tacking down landmarks on the topography of Paul’s body. The knot of an ankle, the bend of a knee, the spur of a hip.

Just when Paul is on the verge of asking him to fucking _do_ something, John presses his aquiline nose to the tent in his underwear and _breaths._ A deep, greedy inhale—and, shit, if that isn’t the most erotic thing Paul’s ever experienced. In natural succession, John’s mouth follows and he sucks lightly at the damp material. Paul knows without a doubt that he could get off from this alone; but a truly worthwhile present would be John’s mouth sealed tight around him, no barriers, driving him to a toe-curling orgasm.

“Can I suck you off?” John asks, already tucking two fingers into the waistband of his underwear. His voice is sandpaper-rough, and it’s amazing what fifteen minutes and an onslaught of kisses can do to a bloke.

Feeling a bit wrecked himself, Paul blurts the first thought he latches onto. “Well, ‘m not expectin’ you to set up a fuckin’ chess game down there.”

“Don’t be rude,” John says, but he’s laughing. Laughing and still so, _so_ close to Paul’s dick, peeling away his underwear until there’s nothing but soft breath and firm skin.

“Right, sorry, I’m—I’m sorry.” He swallows, dry and nearly painful. “Yeah, please, I want you to. Please.”

“He’s so polite when he’s about to get his cock wet,” John quips, but is soon filling his mouth with Paul’s length instead of half-assed jokes.

It’s a lot more than Paul expected John to take after months of (hopefully) no fine-tuning. So the whine that rips out of him can hardly be staved off when John swallows him nearly to the hilt, only reeling back an inch or so when his overzealousness gets the best of him and he chokes up. One hand instinctively grapples for the sheets, the other for John’s head, and his eyebrows draw in tight across his brow.

Once he reconfigures himself, takes a couple of panting breaths, Paul forces his eyes downward. John is an absolutely gorgeous sight. Cheeks dusted pink, hair kissed by chaos, and eyes somehow focused and glazed all at once. Paul wishes he could capture the moment in a frame. He missed this so fucking much.

He tangles his fingers into John’s hair and strokes the shell of his ear with his thumb. John sighs through his nose, eyes fluttering shut at the silent praise, and grabs onto Paul’s hip for purchase. The moans tumble from deep in the back of his throat more freely now. His entire body is a guitar string one tuning peg twist away from snapping in two, but John is feeding him only one painfully slow rotation at a time. _Making up for lost time,_ Paul thinks, _with painstaking attention._

For the first time since he started, John pulls off of him completely. He wraps a hand around the base, angling Paul’s cock in accordance with the long licks he administers to it. When he slips the head back between his lips, suckling and humming, Paul’s toes curl so tightly and reflexively that the bones click. John stills his squirming, slides the hand on Paul’s hip farther until it cups his ass and _squeezes._

“Baby,” Paul pants, voice cracking, “let me—I wanna come.”

John substitutes his mouth with his hand. Too-loose, too-slow, strokes. “‘M sorry, love, is this not doin’ it for you?” he asks with a teasing ring, despite the rubbed-raw scratch coating it.

(Paul did that to him. With his cock. Accomplished in a handful of minutes what it typically takes an entire set of songs to do. A shiver of pride rushes up his spine.)

“Don’t…don’t be a fuckface,” Paul says, swiping a bead of sweat from his brow.

John huffs a laugh, drops a kiss to the tip. “That’s a bit on the nose, dontcha think?”

Before Paul can draw the breath to hurl another complaint, John is back on him and coercing a sinful groan from his lips instead. He bobs his head, once, twice—opening his throat to welcome any damage done. Then, on a leisure, wet stroke upward their eyes catch, and John presses his tongue firmly against the underside as he rides the movement straight to the head.

That’s all it takes to leave Paul snapped and vibrating.

Digging his heels into the mattress, he comes with a fist shoved between his teeth. If possible, his dick hardens even more in John’s mouth, but he takes it like a champ and swallows every last drop like it’s sustenance. Paul’s vision fuzzes around the edges, and the high is no different than coming off a stage or downing a few uppers.

John follows close behind, shoving a hand down his own trousers and burrowing his face into Paul’s thigh as he works himself in frantic strokes. With an invisible weight on his eyelids, Paul watches the pleasure claim John’s face, half-washed in shadows though it is. He moans and it’s broken and hoarse and enough to make Paul’s cock give a valiant little twitch of interest.

“Paul,” John mumbles when he comes down, over and over, against Paul’s skin, writing in the calligraphy of his breath. A kiss follows—the punctuation to his broad thought.

They catch their breath together, silence finally finding a seat in the room. Paul idly twiddles his fingers through John’s hair and counts the number of freckles dotting along John’s shoulder like constellations. The seconds fold around them like centuries; but once John finally recuperates enough to meet his eyes, Paul’s smile is as youthful as ever.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, half-heartedly patting at John’s shoulder until he hauls himself up the bed. They kiss, deep and languid. Paul licks inside of John’s mouth, tastes himself and John and all of the promises they, thankfully, never kept. He breaks their kiss, whispers, “I love you.”

Waits for the walls to crumble down.

They don’t.

“Mmm, I love you, too,” John answers, only pausing to press kisses along Paul’s cheek, nose, temple. Paul bites the inside of his lip to ward off the stupid smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. A pleasant distraction, he notices the hand hovering near his head, covered in spunk. Holding John by the wrist, he sucks his fingers into his mouth two at a time, then swipes his tongue up the palm. With a low groan, John buries his face against the ridge of Paul’s collarbone. “Jesus Christ, yer fuckin’ insatiable.”

Paul strokes his finger along the soft skin behind John’s ear. Says matter-of-factly, “Funny how yer actin’ like you didn’t just have the best bloody Christmas Eve of your life.”

“Oh, I don’t disagree,” John is quick to say. As he re-situates their positions, bundling into the covers, he adds, “S’just that no one’s gonna be around to give you a poke or stroke when you wear out me brittle, old-man bones.”

Paul smothers his laugh into John’s hair and latches onto the fingers entwining with his own. “My needs don’t just stop there, you know. I’ll also be expecting more cheesy, impractical holiday presents from here on out.”

“Just you wait, baby,” John declares, soft, with a kiss to his chest. “Come Valentine’s Day ‘m gonna knock your fucking socks off.”

“How romantic,” Paul snorts. “Really, though, you should come back on New Year’s, for the _big_ party. I’d love to see Aunt Gin givin’ you the eye after too many glasses of champagne.”

“Sounds bloody awful.”

Paul smiles. “For you, yeah.”

After that, conversation falls away. John’s breathing evens out the more Paul weaves his fingers through his hair. He’s close to dropping off into sleep himself, finally finding peace of mind after months without it, when he hears words so soft they’re hardly words at all.

“There’s somethin’ I forgot to tell you, Macca,” John is saying, sleepily.

Paul hums, angles his head closer to where John’s face rests against his chest. Leveling his voice with that of John’s soft murmur, he asks, “What’s that, love?”

“Merry Christmas.”

This time there’s no stopping the smile that seizes Paul’s lips.

“Merry Christmas, Johnny.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading and liking! hope you enjoyed; leave your thoughts and comments bc they make my day!
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> [***Shameless Self-Promotion***](https://unchaineddaisychain.tumblr.com)
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> [anyone is welcome to contact me, but if you know a lot about British culture and are willing to offer your friendship or expertise for the sake of fanfiction, this struggling, American bitch would be eternally grateful :)]


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